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Thursday, February 9, 2012

The Red Book

In 1943, C.S. Lewis wrote a pamphlet, later
published under the title The Abolition
of Man. In it he
referred to a book the contents of which he found utterly repelling. Regarding the authors of the book, he
affirmed, “I shall have nothing good to say of them”. Being a man of decency and kindness, Lewis
examined the book’s content at length, but said of the writers, “I propose to
conceal their names. I shall refer to these gentlemen as Gaius and Titius and
to their book as The Green
Book.” He promised his readers, however, that the
book did exist, and that he had it on his shelves.

Like Lewis, I also have come into
contact with a book the contents of which I find utterly repelling. It is full of lies, mistakes, half-truths,
and distortions. It breathes a spirit of
pride and arrogance, as it examines the faith and practice of Protestants,
Roman Catholics and Orthodox (that is, pretty much everyone) and finds them all
mistaken, misled and damaging to authentic spiritual life. It involves throughout a hermeneutic of
historical suspicion, for it takes for granted that the Church Fathers were
half-pagan men who distorted and paganized the Christian Faith. (That the basic tenets of Roman Catholicism
were wrong is taken for granted, as it is in most partisan Evangelical
Protestant writing.) Much of the blame
for pretty much everything in the Church is laid at the feet of the Emperor
Constantine, whom the two authors regard as essentially pagan (his mother Helen does not come off
much better, but is described as “most noted for her obsession with relics”). Everything characteristic of Roman
Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and classical and revivalist Protestantism is denounced
and jettisoned. I found the hubris
involved in the project completely breath-taking.

Also like Lewis, “I propose to
conceal their names”, and shall refer to these gentlemen as Valentinus and
Marcion, and to their book as The Red Book. (In this I am admittedly motivated not so
much by the kindness that motivated Lewis as I am by a reluctance to publicize
the volume in any way.) But I also
promise you that this book exists, and that I have it on my shelves. (I am filing it in the “Cult” section of my
library. It is nestling comfortably
against Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures.)

One
thing nice I can say about Valentinus and Marcion. They appear to be quite sincere. They are doing their best to question
anything that to their mind distorts the true Christian Faith, and are prepared
to jettison most of their own Protestant heritage as quickly as they have
already, like most Protestants, jettisoned the Roman Catholic heritage. They are striving to question long-standing
presuppositions, however entrenched these might be in Protestant praxis. But the one presupposition that they do not seem
to question is the one fundamental to all fundamentalists—namely that the New
Testament gives us a blue-print for how to “do” church, and that we should
follow it slavishly today.

That is, Valentinus
and Marcion have rejected the notion (probably without knowing it) that the New
Testament is rooted and situated within the flow of history. Any development that took place after the
last New Testament document was penned is simply rejected out of hand as dilution
and distortion, as a paganization of the pristine Faith. Thus they pretend that they are still in the
first century and try to reproduce its practices. Even here they are not self-consistent, for
if they really wanted to reproduce the ecclesiastical life of the first century
and “do church” like they did then, they would not refer to the New Testament
as an authoritative body of literature, for the concept of a “New Testament”
(i.e. the canon) was a much later development.
They would not even read from the four Gospels, for the churches to whom
Paul wrote did not read any of these Gospels, since they had not yet been
written. The stories of Jesus circulated
then as part of an oral tradition (Acts 20:35 preserves a fragment of this oral
tradition, one which did not make it into any of the four Gospels). Rejecting the principle of valid and
divinely-led development is therefore not “on” for the Christian, for use of
the New Testament canon presupposes it.
We can have confidence in the Church and the developments that it
eventually accepted. Christ promised
that He would guide His Church into all truth (Jn. 16:13), and there is no
suggestion that the promise had an expiry date.
When Christ said that the gates of hell would not prevail against the Church
(Mt. 16:18), He didn’t add, “at least not until the beginning of the second
century”.

In future posts, I
would like to examine The Red Book
more thoroughly, even as Lewis examined The
Green Book—and not simply because the book needs an answer. It doesn’t really. If one committed oneself to answering every
idiotic critique of the Faith, one would never have time to sleep. But I would like to examine it because it by examining
its mistakes, fallacies, lies, and half-truths, we may come to understand the
truth of our Orthodox Faith more fully.

Fr. Lawrence on Ancient Faith:

BUY the book

Fr. L. at oca.org

Followers

Father Lawrence Farley holds an M.Div.from Wycliffe College, Toronto School of Theology, and also completed a Certificate program at St. Tikhon's Seminary.

Since 1987 he has served as the pastor of St. Herman's Orthodox Church, OCA (Archdiocese of Canada) in Langley BC. Several priests, deacons, and lay members of new missions have emerged from the membership of St. Herman's.